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An anonymous reader writes with news that the first successful case was brought before the copyright tribunal under NZ's three strikes law. From the article: "The first music pirate stung under new file-sharing laws has been fined $616 but 'didn't realise' the actions were illegal. The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) — which represents music studios — took an unnamed offender to the Copyright Tribunal last year for sharing songs on the Internet — a track by Barbadian pop-star Rihanna on two occasions and the other by Nashville band Hot Chelle Rae. In a decision released today, the tribunal found in RIANZ's favor and ordered the offender ... to pay a penalty $616.57."
Torrent Freak has a slightly different perspective: a lack of evidence and pushback from the tribunal resulted in much smaller fines than the RIANZ wanted.

So, with guilt under current law established, the Tribunal set about the task of a financial punishment. According to regulations, in a downloading case the cost of the infringed products must be considered. Man Down is available of iTunes for $2.39 (US$2.00) and Tonight Tonight at $1.79 (US$1.50)....With this in mind the Tribunal said it would order the subscriber to pay RIANZ double the iTunes price of Man Down (2 x $2.39) and the same for Tonight Tonight (2 x $1.79) – a total of $6.57 (US$5.49). This aspect of the Tribunal’s decision will be a huge disappointment for RIANZ.

- $6.57 to cover the cost of the tracks- $50 to cover RIANZ's costs of sending the notices (and presumably other administrative costs)- $200 to cover the cost of bringing it before the copyright body- $360 ($120 per infringement) as a deterrant. The only actual punitive cost.

Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people over an activity in which no one could be injured, no property can be destroyed, no one is harassed and economic damage is negligible.

I would guess that if you stole, say, $6 worth of products from a store and got caught, they would charge you something similar, so yes it appears reasonable (unlike the "more than the earth is worth" fines that have been bandied about in other countries).

- Cost of the product (though whether you experienced "permanent deprivation" of that cost is dubious, I'd award it you anyway so that people who pirate $1000 pieces of software are $1000 times as fined as someone who pirated a $1 piece of software).- Plus administrative fees.- Plus legal costs once a denial has taken place in front of a tribunal and you're still found guilty.- Plus a punitive damage for actually doing the naughty thing in the first place.

Seems to be the first SENSIBLE ruling in terms of copyright on the Internet in years, in fact.

The store analogy is wrong. The store paid 4$ for the product, they would have sold it for 6$, paying off the merchandise and getting a profit of 2$. Copying the songs costs nothing. NOTHING

Do you know how people that intentionally pirate things think? Just like the WTO and Antigua did.The RIAA people charge you for music, that costs NOTHING for them to duplicate, and music that's so old, the artists died of old age.They don't respect people, why should the people respect th

And yes, true property has to be physical. "Imaginary property" is a terrible term that confuses things and encourages application of "age of scarcity"/pre-information age to things it shouldn't apply to, leading to inefficient artificial social and economic structures (ultimately doomed to failure anyway) to support them. It is wrong to treat things like music, art in the same method as commodities where quantity matters. Because the quantity of something does

In this case it's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Said customer will never buy music again and friends of the customer will likely also ramp down their buying. Pissing off your customers only ever loses you customers. The more public the fines the more the effort will grow to cheat the system.

No matter how much you wish people think it has. Everyone still has everything they had before this "offense" was committed. The copyright holders didn't lose any money because the person downloading the tracks probably would never have paid for them anyway.

Sooner or later this whole laughably outdated concept of copyright is going to be replaced by something less insane.

In order to actually steal that right, you would have to substantially prevent the owner from freely exercising it.

If anyone out there could be said to be stealing a copyright, it would be ASCAP. They will demand fees even if you are playing an artist's song with his explicit permission. That is, they attempt to deny the artist the right to license his own work as he chooses.

The "per infringement" thing could end up really bad when people are sharing their whole music collection. I mean three songs seems rather tiny amount for the average act of piracy, most would probably at least share the whole album, if not the whole bands history.

Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people over an activity in which no one could be injured, no property can be destroyed, no one is harassed and economic damage is negligible.

Not only are the costs reasonable, but it makes me wonder how many other lawsuits will find their way to the courts now. Not sure how the courts work in New Zealand, but if they work on any type of precidence system, then this lawsuit set precidence that it is not going to be economically viable for the music and video industries to sue. Shoot, probably won't even cover a single lawyer's cost for a day.

> Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people

Seems to me to be a perfect balance between the punishment and the price/inconvenience of using an offshore VPN... but that was probably just coincidence because of the small number of infringements which were claimed.

This fine is only low compared to the ridiculous claims being made by the record companies. The actual cost of the music was less than 6$, so this works out to paying a penalty of roughly 100 times the value of the material he 'stole'.

That's the idea behind a deterrent. If the fine is so low that people are willing to pay it and go on their merry way if they get caught, there's no point in it. The deterrent needs to be high enough to make people think twice before doing it and $120 per infringement, plus covering reasonable overhead costs is right about what it should be, otherwise why bother having copyright law at all?

I'm aware of the rational behind laws and fines. My point is not that the fine should be lower, but that because of penalties record companies seek (millions) that we already consider a 100x fine to be low.

It also needs to function as a deterrent. If it is not effective at actually deterring people, it needs to be abolished.

In 18th century England, shoplifting was punishable by death. But there were always lots and lots of thieves, because it wasn't an effective deterrent.

I doubt that this thing in NZ will accomplish a whole lot other than to make people angry about copyright law, which is perhaps the opposite of what the proponents of the measure want. Personally, I think we're looking at a Tarkin's Grip sit

That's the idea behind a deterrent. If the fine is so low that people are willing to pay it and go on their merry way if they get caught, there's no point in it. The deterrent needs to be high enough to make people think twice before doing it and $120 per infringement, plus covering reasonable overhead costs is right about what it should be, otherwise why bother having copyright law at all?

I think the argument is what you define as "per infringement".

It is just as easy to share a whole library as it is to share a single song. Does that mean each sharing of a song is a single act of infringement? If so, someone's kid could still create a life-destroying event quite quickly. (5,000 songs x $120, plus other fees.)

However, if that is a single act of infringement, it's $120 plus other fees, which would still be double the cost of all the songs according to this panel.

1) By copyright. If each song is copyrighted individually, then each song counts as 1 infringement. If the album is copyrighted as a whole, then one infringement per album regardless of whether it's one song or the entire album.

2) How it's sold. If the song is normally sold individually, then each song is one infringement. If the song is normally only available as part of an album, then any and all songs from that album should be grouped together. If the song is available as

Those kinds of ideas don't fundamentally change anything. It's good that many people realize copyright has gotten out of hand, and make proposals like yours. But few take it to the logical conclusion, which is that copyright itself is a flawed idea, and needs radical change. I am disturbed by the number of comments here suggesting that the accused is indeed guilty and deserving of some kind of punishment, and that the fine wasn't very high, and is therefore acceptable.

If I were to be fined, say, $1.5M for sharing a couple of albums on bittorrent, then that would do little to stop me doing it again. Sure, it would ruin my life, but after I declared bankruptcy, I'd probably be out doing it again, just to stick it to the man.

If I were on the other hand to be fined over $600 for sharing a couple of tracks, that's not something that's big enough to waste tens of thousands or more of lawyer time on appeals, nor

Actually, you can't appeal tribunal decisions. It's final. You also can be represented by at best a solicitor, and that's only if a hearing is called (usually, our copyright tribunal decides based on paper submissions, no real-time argument. To top it off, the law instructs the tribunal to consider an accusation of infringement as evidence that infringement occurred. The burden is on you to prove that it didn't (and how do you prove a negative again?)

in a downloading case the cost of the infringed products must be considered. Man Down is available of iTunes for $2.39 (US$2.00) and Tonight Tonight at $1.79 (US$1.50)....

I wish people wouldn't confuse "cost" with "price". The cost
of a product is how much money it takes to manufacture one unit.
The price of a product is how much it is sold for. Gross profit = price - cost.

It depends on your perspective. From the seller's perspective, it's what you described. From the consumer's perspective, cost is the same as the price. It's pretty clear from the context they're referring to the cost to the consumer, which is the same as the price. You can argue that within a specific field, words have a very specific meaning, but the article is neither written by, nor targeted at, such a specific field.

Depends on your countries laws. In Canada that's exactly how it works, hence downloading in Canada is legal. Uploading however is not. (You're allowed to get your content anywhere, legally, due to the blank media levy, however you still aren't allowed to give it to others)

Of course we've now completely gutted that by adding a "digital locks" provision, but that really just makes things even weirder. For example, I can no longer make a backup of my own legally aquired works as I'd have to break a digital loc

They simply do not understand that they with this are chipping away at the very foundation that supports their business; their customers. They might stay afloat for a while but sooner or later something is bound to crack in a big way. I feel sad for every person this happen to, but it's unavoidable.

I was convicted the other year of property damage. You know, actually breaking shit. Total fine, including replacement for the property fucked up and court costs? Roughly the same as this lady has to pay for downloading three songs. That's really fucked up. I went out and deliberately and maliciously broke shit. I was caught and convicted. This lady (allegedly) downloaded three songs (one of them twice...).

So she could have gone and thrown a rock through the RIANZ front window and got off with less*. That says something about the fucked upness of this whole situation. Hell, she probably could have gone and punched the head of the RIANZ in the fucking face and got off with a smaller fine (though probably some community work as well).

Or... y'know... maybe... and I know this is going to sound just totally crazy here, a person could just not do illegal stuff in the first place?

Okay, this person didn't know what they were doing was illegal. But, ignorance of the law is not an excuse to break it. It might be an excuse for a lesser judgement, however... but she certainly knows now, and, if ever caught again, the fine will probably be much worse.

Because note.... this is a *FINE*... not a settlement. When being fined for criminal activ

To answer your three final questions: I don't make a habit of it. Never intentionally. And no. So to sum up, no.... I don't do illegal stuff all the time.

As for why she's getting fined for a crime there's no evidence she committed, she *admitted* to it....there's only one track that was even in dispute and that would have made only a difference of $2.19 in the judgement.

Personally, I don't think the fines are excessive at all... they are sufficient to leave a lasting impression that she will remember

A) Possibly... Not something I make a practice of, however. Which was my only point. If I'm caught doing something illegal that I didn't know about, I don't expect to not have to pay the consequences, however.

B) the disputed incident would not have substantially altered the penalty, as I said above.

As for why she's getting fined for a crime there's no evidence she committed, she *admitted* to it....there's only one track that was even in dispute and that would have made only a difference of $2.19 in the judgement.

There were THREE separate and unique infringements she was accused of committing. She admitted the first. She abstained from answering about the second. She denied the third.

Just because you admit to one crime, it doesn't make you guilty of other independent crimes. It also doesn't matter

Considering the nature of the crime, being guilty of one incident gives sufficient cause to consider the person guilty of the other two without proof to the contrary. It's like being caught lying.... once you are caught doing it once, it makes other things you've said which are related very unbelievable.

Like I said... don't deliberately do illegal shit in the first place and this wouldn't be an issue. If she had pleaded not guilty to all three, I'd have been a whole lot more supportive of her position

Like I said... don't deliberately do illegal shit in the first place and this wouldn't be an issue. If she had pleaded not guilty to all three, I'd have been a whole lot more supportive of her position.

So what you are saying is that if she were more dishonest, you would be more supportive of her?

The media companies got $6.57 in compensation for their loses... (Similarly, when I broke that shit, I paid around $150 to replace the damaged shit.) The rest was court (or in this case tribunal and other) costs, a fine (in this case $120*3).

Speeding tickets include a lot of administrative costs and shit on top of the fine for actually committing the offense, too. So what? I think most/.ers are just happy the fine wasn't in the tens of thousands of dollars. It's a reasonable punishment for what is, as several folks have pointed out, a crime.

By speeding you can actually kill people. Any deterrence fine applied to this practice should be much larger than the deterrence for illegal downloads. That is not the case, so it is reasonable to infer that something is wrong here.

Well, considering being caught speeding three times in NZ would result in anywhere from $90 to $1890 (depending on how fast you go over the limit - it's a sliding scale from $30 for less than 10km/h over the limit to $630 for 50km/h over the limit) and if all three times were 20km/h or more over the limit would result in a 12 month license suspension, the fines are more severe for speeding.

Even going 10% above the speed limit is a much more dangerous behavior than downloading copyrighted files, and apparently the fines are much cheaper. Buy the data provided by you the break even point is when one is exceeding the limit by 50 km/h which is extremely dangerous most of the time. Additionally if the person is caught again downloading illegal files I bet the fines won't be the same.

Or... y'know... maybe... and I know this is going to sound just totally crazy here, a person could just not do illegal stuff in the first place?

Sure. As soon as the laws are reasonable, proportional, and a reflection of the will of the people and not merely what they've been coerced into accepting by a system that values money and power more than fairness, logic, and actual societal benefit, then I'll stop doing illegal stuff.

As long as the law exists to protect the powerful, and not everyone equally, it'

Broken or not, the former is infinitely preferable... and at least while we have it, there is still hope to make it better. Weakening it to the point that it no longer has any value to creators is not a way to accomplish that.

No... copyright is not censorship... it is the very opposite, since the works that are copyrighted are being actually published. That you aren't permitted to freely copy them doesn't change that. The alternative is for the creator to not publish at all (which is what no small number of people did before copyright, when they feared their works would simply be blatantly copied).

I didn't get that bit. Surly, she knew after the first strike? She was informed at the first occurrence, right? Or is there just some internal counter in somebody's system, which only sends out a letter once it hits 3?

I guess the argument is that the file sharing is more financially damaging to the RIANZ customers than if you had literally smashed their window or broken shit in their office. May seem counterintuitive at first but makes sense.

"but since there is a “statutory presumption” that each incidence of file-sharing alleged in an infringement notice constitutes an actual infringement of copyright,"

This is fucking scary that there is a statutory presumption at play here. I wonder what is required to submit an infringement notice, because it seems like a simple way to convert flimsy evidence into a crime.

Copyright could be a noun, adjective, or verb. Fines could be a noun or verb. My first impression was that New Zealand was copyrighting something. I'm not sure why headlines have to have each word capitalized--I'm not even going to read the summary.

Part of the problem is that/. insists on title-case in headlines, which makes them more confusing more often than not. Most newspapers these days go with sentence case, only uppercasing words that are proper nouns or the first word in the headline. "NZ Copyright Tribunal fines first file sharer" would make it more clear that we're talking about a specific governing body because the capital letters would mean something.

At least they had the guts to call it a "tribunal" which has the subconscious association of medieval witch-hunts, heretics being put on trial by The Church, etc.

Hopefully at one point they will catch the wrong guy that will rally the people against this... the Content Industry persecuting regular folks doing nothing more than "we" did with cassette tapes on the school yard.

I know there's a Pirate Party of NZ [pirateparty.org.nz] but that shouldn't stop anyone from contacting the "we already know who wins because they always wi

For what it's worth though, the Copyright Tribunal actually exists for a completely different statutory purpose (defining mechanical royalty rates, granting authorisation to copy without rights holder consent, etc) and was "re-purposed" for this task.

And we call everything that isn't a Court a Tribunal. We have a Disputes Tribunal as well.

The first fire-sharer was Prometheus. His punishment was getting his liver pecked at by an eagle every morning. NZD616 doesn't sound so bad in comparison.

In fact, the Prometheus myth is uncannily applicable to the current IP situation:
(a) He didn't actually steal fire, but rather replicated it (causing no loss to its owners on Mt. Olympus).
(b) He benefited mankind by sharing it.
(c) He got a totally incommensurate punishment from the jealous "guardians" of this easily replicable thing.

The defendant acknowledged downloading the first song but without knowing it was from an unlicensed source. She says the download of the first song caused a a bit torrent client to be installed automatically. She was unaware of the download of the second song. She was given a notice for downloading the first song twice. She is not sure how that occurred since she believed she had downloaded it only once. Then the third strike was a completely different song.
The $360 is a made up on the spot "deterrent" on very shaky ground. One of the aggravating factors the tribunal claims in setting this deterrent is:
"The fact that the account holder had BitTorrent protocol (uTorrent version 2.2.0) software installed on her computer. It notes that the locating, downloading, installing and configuring of such software is a deliberate act and does not occur without direct action on behalf of a computer user"
http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/2013%20NZCOP%201%20-%20RAINZ%20v%20Teleom%20NZ%202592_1.pdf [nbr.co.nz]